Review: Visiting Great Wolf Lodge Northern California as a Day Trip With Kids

My kids love Great Wolf Lodge Northern California, in Manteca, CA. My son referred to it as “kid paradise” when we went there and stayed the night.

But it’s not always possible to plan an overnight trip. I wondered what it would be like to go to Great Wolf Lodge as a day trip, rather than staying the night.

So, this fall, I headed out to Great Wolf Lodge with my seven-year-old son, with plans to spend the day exploring the 95,000-square-foot waterpark, riding the waterslides, playing arcade games, eating burgers, and otherwise having a great time!

It turns out Great Wolf Lodge, Northern California, is a great place to go for a day trip. Here are my thoughts and recommendations after our visit.

The Basics

Great Wolf Lodge in Manteca is a combination of a waterpark, an indoor activity center, and a hotel. It’s a bit over an hour’s drive from San Francisco, and around 45 minutes from where I live in the 925.

Staying over in the hotel is a lot of fun. The rooms have kid-themed sleeping areas, including bunk beds that look like they’re in a log cabin! You can even visit on a shoestring budget.

Although most people come to spend the night, you can also purchase a day pass to Great Wolf Lodge that allows you to visit for the full day.

You can buy a day pass on the Great Wolf Lodge website. The pricing varies by the day of the week and the season.

Very busy holiday weekends can be as pricey as $125 per person, but if you’re able to go during a quiet time or during the week, the price is a lot less. Prices were about $40 for a day pass during September as I write this.

They also offer a 15% discount for first responders and a half-day pass that covers 4pm to closing.

Personally, I took my son on a relatively quiet Tuesday right before school started, which ended up working great. Just a note that Great Wolf Lodge comped us for the day pass and Wolf Pass so I could photograph the facility. The Bay Area Telegraph paid for food and incidentals.

What a Day Pass Gets You

The day passes for Great Wolf Lodge give you basically all the privileges of staying overnight, except for the actual hotel room. You can eat at the restaurants, go to the waterpark at no extra charge, do all the activities (for a charge), etc.

Although the price is a bit high for the day passes on busy days, remember that you can arrive early and stay until the waterpark closes, which is typically as late as 8 PM.

That means you can make an entire day out of visiting and spend 10 or 12 hours riding the slides, hanging out in the wave pool, and otherwise enjoying the facilities. When you think about it that way, the pricing doesn’t seem as high. And it’s certainly less than you’ll spend on a day at Disneyland!

The pass gives you access to the waterpark, but you’ll still have to buy any activities like mini-golf, bowling, etc. As described below, it may be worth getting a Wolf Pass that gives you access to these activities at a discount.

Or, you can simply spend the whole day in the waterpark and do all the things you’d want to do for just the cost of admission!

Lockers and Locker Room

My biggest question in planning the day trip was whether there would be somewhere we could store our stuff, get changed, and take a shower while we were in the waterpark.

One of the great things about staying over at Great Wolf Lodge is that you always have your room as a home base to go back to.

Without that home base, I wondered, would it still be enjoyable to go to the waterpark? The great news is that Great Wolf Lodge Northern California has free locker rooms with shower facilities, so it’s easy to change into your bathing suit and take a shower after going in the water.

They even have family restroom-style ones where it’s an individual room that you get all to yourself.

They also have paid lockers that vary in size, which you can use to store your stuff. I rented a large locker for the full day for $18, so I could store my clothing, camera equipment, and more.

The Waterpark

The main reason to visit Great Wolf Lodge on a day trip is to go to the incredible waterpark!

The waterpark is one of the biggest indoor spaces I’ve ever seen. It’s 95,000 square feet, which means that you could fit 50 typical Bay Area houses inside of it with room to spare.

There are over 10 waterslides, including body slides, multiple large tube slides (including several that go outside of the building with giant drops and spins), a lazy river, a recreation pool with a basketball court, and more.

Here’s a video I made of myself riding many of the slides:

For the littlest kids, there’s a splash pad area and some very tame slides that go into a shallow pool.

There’s also a giant wave pool right in the middle of the waterpark. Every few minutes, there’s a loud sound of a wolf howling, and then the waves start up.

It’s very neat that all of this is indoors, so even if you visit during the chilly fall and winter season, it’s a balmy 85° inside the waterpark.

The water is heated to at least 83°, so it’s always easy to get in and out—you barely need a towel!

We brought our own towels, but Great Wolf Lodge also provides them at a special stand. You’ll need to check them out and then check them back in before you leave.

There’s lots of seating inside the waterpark, so especially if you go on a quiet day, you can get a nice seat if you want to watch your kids splash around and not necessarily ride the slides yourself.

My seven-year-old was able to go on all but two of the waterslides. A slightly older kid who is over 48 inches tall would be able to go on all of them.

We spent about four hours just in the waterpark. If you were visiting with teenagers or older kids, though, you could easily spend an entire day there.

Food and Dining Options

Great Wolf Lodge doesn’t allow you to bring your own food into the waterpark, but they provide a convenient option to order food without even leaving the room!

Their Buckets Cafe has an entrance in the main activity center outside the waterpark, but there’s a second walk-up window and ordering system in the park itself.

We went on the slides, took a break to have a tasty burger and some giant soft pretzels, and then went right back to having fun.

If you’re on a budget, you can always leave the waterpark and even leave Great Wolf Lodge for lunch at a nearby place. Or, you could bring your own food and a cooler and leave it in the car, then go out and have lunch as a little picnic. Re-entering is free all day with the day pass so you don’t need to worry about coming and going.

Parking is also free!

If you stay in the evening, the Barnwood restaurant is a nice place to grab a slightly fancier dinner. You can also get grab-and-go items, candy, Dunkin’ Donuts, and other kid-friendly treats.

Activities and Other Things to Do

One of the nice things about Great Wolf Lodge as a day trip is the fact that it’s not just the waterpark; there are all kinds of indoor activities that you can do, all within the same building.

My son loves MagiQuest, a wizard-themed real-life video game, where you run around the hotel with an electronic wand. There are various quests the kids get to go on. They collect “runes” by waving their wand at little kiosks around the property.

As a parent, I loved that my son was running around and getting some great exercise. Especially in the dreary winter months and the rainy season, this would be a great way to get your kids to run around indoors.

We also did mini-golf in the middle of the adventure park. There’s a ropes course for bigger kids, a mini bowling alley, and an arcade too.

For younger kids, there’s a Build-A-Bear Workshop in the middle.

These activities are great if you want a break from the waterpark. They’re also great if you’re visiting with multiple kids, and one kid doesn’t necessarily want to go on the slides. You can easily take them to plenty of activities while the other parts of your group enjoy the waterpark.

Keep in mind that all of these activities are pried separately. Your day pass gets you access to the property and free access to everything in the waterpark, but activities are extra.

To save money, you might want to get a Wolf Pass. This gives you access to various activities, as well as perks like a discount on Build-A-Bear, a cup of candy at the candy shop, ice cream, and more.

Conclusion

My son and I had a fantastic time visiting Great Wolf Lodge as a day trip.

We spent hours in the waterpark, enjoyed the mini-golf, ate some tasty kid-friendly food, and ended the day with a bunch of candy.

It’s kind of a perfect day for a little kid. It was a nice way to spend some time together before he went back to school and got really into the swing of things.

Great Wolf Lodge Northern California is a bit pricey, and if you’re planning to go on a busy weekend, it can get crowded, and the price is higher.

For that reason, I recommend this as a fun trip for a day off during the week.

You can absolutely visit during the summer, but I think this is the perfect day trip for those dreary, cold, rainy winter months here in the Bay Area.

It’s very hard to get outside and move around a lot during those days. Going to Great Wolf Lodge in Manteca is a great way to have fun in a giant indoor space where it’s warm and balmy, and your kids can run around playing MagiQuest and mini-golf.

I’ll definitely be back with my son, both to stay over with the rest of the family and for day trips.

Want to visit Great Wolf Lodge for a day trip? You can get a ticket on their website.